


Phobia

by Okami_no_fude



Series: Linked Universe oneshots [6]
Category: Linked Universe - Fandom, The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Childhood Trauma, Hurt/Comfort, Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda), Mentions of burning and burn wounds, Pyrophobia, Slight case of Rhabdophobia, descriptions of violence, mention of self-harm in the past, not too graphic though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 11:49:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20134975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Okami_no_fude/pseuds/Okami_no_fude
Summary: Hyrule was curious about the shadowy magic he sensed from Twilight and began observing him.Instead, he began to notice something concerning about the elder hero.





	Phobia

**Author's Note:**

> It seems that I like to write angst way too much, and since its Angsty August (which was coined in one of the channels in the LU discord), I'm going to start this with hurting my favorite Link, Twilight! (Forgive me Twilight >_<)  
And as some people wanted some Twilight and Hyrule interaction, I thought why not?
> 
> [Linked Universe](https://linkeduniverse.tumblr.com/) AU belongs to @jojo56830 on tumblr.  
Legend of Zelda belongs to Nintendo.

While Hyrule was not the most observant of the group of heroes, he had one point that he could be proud of himself.

When it came to magic, he was the one who was the most knowledgeable among them.

Sure, most of the others had magical items they found from their adventure (especially Legend’s hoard of magical items) but he was one of the few that could actually cast spells.

And with that, came his sensitivity towards magic. He could feel the very energy of the fiery magic that was about to burst when Legend whips out his Fire rod, the swirling breeze that flows around Wind’s Wind Waker, the pure sacred energy remnant of the three goddesses that was dormant within Time (for some strange reasons)...

So it was very concerning for Hyrule to sense magical energy that had a shadowy feel to it.

From Twilight of all people. The one person who never shown any magic skills, and expressed dislike for it.

Why was he sensing a residue of shadowy magic on Twilight?

Concerned, he began to carefully observe Twilight and branched out his senses. While it took him a few days to pinpoint where the source of the energy was due to the residue being all over Twilight, he figured out where it was. 

It was the black and orange crystal that was hanging around the older hero's neck.

Something that Hyrule often spied Twilight looking either fondly or forlornly.

When he focused his senses on it, he realized that he had been sensing something very similar to one of their (sometimes) companion: Wolfie.

When they had first met Wolfie, Hyrule had some trepidation toward the wolf because his magic senses had been screaming at him that the beast had an affinity toward shadowy magic, but seeing how Wild and Time had welcomed the wolf with a smile, and how friendly it had acted towards the others, he figured that he could lower his guard towards the beast.

The fact the wolf often fought alongside them helped him feel that way.

While he wanted to confront Twilight when he had figured this out to make sure that this shadowy magic was not affecting him in any negative way, he had seen something very concerning when observing the older hero.

How he had been flinching slightly every time when one of them brought out a magical item that had an affinity toward fire.

This was concerning as he knew most of them in this group of heroes, they had weapons and items that had fire magic, and for some people, they utilize magic a lot in their combat.

_ ’Come to think of it, wasn’t Twilight very against of Wild using his fire arrow to light up the campfire?’ _ Hyrule remembered a conversation very early into their journey.

_ “What are you doing Wild?!" _

_ The band of heroes had turned toward the commotion, and they saw Twilight standing over Wild who was kneeling near the pile of wood. _

_ "uh, I'm lighting a fire?" Wild answered, a perplexed tone coloring his voice. _

_ "Yes, but with what?" _

_ "My fire arrow???" _

_ "You can't always rely on magic to do such things?! What if you ran out of fire weapons?! what happened to the old-fashioned way of making a fire?" _

_ "Lay it off Country Boy, among all of us, we have enough fire weapons and items that we don’t have to worry about it" Legend interjected, a bit irritated that Wild was being delayed from his cooking. _

_ Twilight looked unsatisfied, but let it go with a huff, mumbling that he was going to perform another scouting trip. _

Hyrule did not recognize then, but thinking back to it, it seemed that while Wild was waving the fire arrow, Twilight had been slightly paler than normal.

Was Twilight afraid of fire? It did not really seem so at first glance, but when he had observed Twilight more closely, he saw some of the subtle signs.

Small flinches whenever a campfire that he did not start roared up suddenly.

The paleness he sees when Wild, Wind, or Legend starts a fire with a fire arrow or ember seeds. How he had been unconsciously sweating bullets whenever Legend and Warriors used their magic rod, or when he uses his magical rod along with his book of magic. How he had been slightly panicky whenever they had encountered fire wizzrobes and fire keese. 

All hints that he observed pointed toward Twilight being afraid of fire, or at least fire with magical origins.

Hyrule needed to know why he was so afraid of magical fire, but Twilight was a man of few words when it came to telling about himself and his journey, and he had expressed himself that he did not really like magic. Hyrule respected his boundaries, so he did not really know how to approach this issue.

But an incident had forced his hand.

\---

As was the common thing, Twilight was separated from the rest of the group with the purpose of "scouting ahead" (which by that time Hyrule was 100% sure Twilight was just disappearing from their sights to transform as Wolfie). 

None of them were expecting to find a camp of bokoblins, lizalfos, wizzrobes, and red flaming chuchus along their pathway.

The band of heroes, along with Wolfie who had suddenly joined the fray without his notice, quickly drew out their weapons and got to work of dispatching the monsters.

"Be careful guys," Wild shouted as they charged forward to engage the enemy."Those chuchus will explode into flames when they die while they are flaming hot! The jelly they leave will are also extremely volatile as well with one hit from anything!"

Warriors shouted orders."Alright, you heard Wild, be careful of the Chuchus! Wild, Legend, Hyrule! you three use projectiles to snipe the chuchus and the wizzrobes! Wind and Four, deal with the bokoblins! Sky, Time, with me and take the Lizalfos!" 

As Hyrule got into position, he could hear Warriors mumble. "Where is Twilight when you need him, fat good does his scouting do!"

Hyrule winced at this, feeling sorry for the aforementioned hero. He knew that Twilight had heard this when he glanced at Wolfie, whose ears drooped a bit. 

He really needed to talk about keeping this as a secret, but that was a talk for later. He needed to focus on eliminating his targets first.

They really did not have too much trouble as they thought they would, as the ones whose' blood was infected were the 3 lizalfos that was leading the group of monsters. 

However, what they were not expecting when the last lizalfos was being finished off, it threw its broadsword toward Four, Wind, and Wolfie who were fighting the bokoblins.

"Shit, watch out!"

Hyrule could only watch in horror as the discarded weapon made an arch toward them.

Right into the pile of the chu jelly remains that were left behind.

The explosion of fire that came from the chu jelly was more massive than Hyrule had been expecting, quickly obscuring his line of sight of the group that was fighting the bokoblins. 

The pained howl from Wolfie made his hairs stand on end.

"Wolfie!"

As soon as the fiery cloud had dissipated, he saw that the explosion had hit the wolf dead on, his fur ablaze. 

Wolfie was panicking, rolling on the ground in hopes to extinguish the fire.

"Oh Hylia, someone help put out the fire!"

At the corner of his eye, he saw Sky rushing out with an item he had never seen him use. Planting his feet in front of the panicking wolf, Sky brought up the item and started blowing huge gusts of wind. As the winds from the item were strong enough, it managed to extinguish the flames.

While the flames hadn't lasted long, they could see the damage it had done, as the fire was, in a sense, magical in nature. 

Patches of fur were missing, burnt skin exposed in angry red colors. Blisters were seemingly forming as well. It looked extremely painful.

Even though the fire was put out Wolfie was still rolling around, giving out pained, panicked yelps and howls. When Hyrule approached him, he could see that the wolf's eyes seemed to be glassy and unfocused.

He was in a panic attack.

Wild, who finished sniping off the rest of the enemies, quickly came over to the panicking wolf and was trying to assess the injuries. 

"Wolfie! Hey Wolfie, you need to calm down, we need to look at your injuries! Don't roll, you're only going to make it worse!" the hero of wild shouted, trying to hold down the wolf while avoiding the angry red burns. 

That only seemed to make Wolfie flail even more, letting out howls, yelps, eventually morphing into snarls, leading to Wolfie almost biting Wild's hand off. 

That put all the heroes off guard.

The wolf's superior strength had won over Wild's grip, and Wild was thrown off. 

As soon as the offending pressure was gone, the panicking, snarling wolf ran off into the forest. 

"No! Shit, he's gonna get his wounds infected, we need to heal him!"

"How are we going to go after him, you know that he disappears without a trace when we try to track him!"

"We need to try though! He might die if we don't treat him!"

"But what are we going to do so, you know the potions we have right now don't work on him!"

Hyrule had enough of the panicking arguments between the heroes. He knew that Wolfie was Twilight, and he knew that look in the wolf's eyes.

he hadn't recognized any of Wild's calls and reassurances, as he was lost in his mind, fear that stemmed from past traumatic experiences. 

Hyrule knew that he was the only one who could possibly track him down, by using his honed magical senses. Whatever magic that Twilight had been using to turn into Wolfie, it left distinct magical energy for him to track easily.

Determined to help his fellow hero, Hyrule began running toward the forest where Wolfie had disappeared to. 

"Hyrule, where are you going!?"

Without looking back to whoever had asked that, Hyrule yelled, "I know how to track him, don't follow me because Wolfie is currently in flight mode, he doesn't need 8 people following him!"

"But how!?" Hyrule heard Warriors shout, confusion in his voice.

"With magic! I think my Life Spell can help him heal as well!"

Without waiting for an answer from the rest of the group, he sped into the foliage, honing his senses to help him find the injured, panicking hero.

As he suspected, it did not take him too long to locate Wolfie. He was rolling in the nearby stream, extremely frantic, and kept twitching his ears and growling at the air. 

"Wolfie," Hyrule called out as softly as possible as he approached the wolf. 

He got no response.

"Twilight? Twilight!"

Nothing.

"Link! Link! You are safe now, do you hear me?!" 

The wolf stopped thrashing in the stream at the last bit, looking at Hyrule with intense blue eyes.

"Link, calm down, take deep breaths. Breath with me, in...out...there is nothing that can hurt you anymore, you are safe." Hyrule spoke as soothingly as he could, trying not to say anything that could trigger Twilight's panic attack again.

Slowly, he could see Twilight's blue eyes returning to its normal shine, and not the glassy look he had been sporting earlier. The wolf hero shook his head a few times as if to get rid of whatever was assaulting his mind during his panic attack. 

"Don't shift back just yet," Hyrule held a hand up as the wolf walked out of the stream. "I need to heal you of your burns as much as possible before you do so, we don't want those injuries to be stretched out." 

If it wasn't a serious situation, Hyrule would have been laughing out loud at the gobsmacked expression the wolf held.

Praying that it would work, he muttered a spell under his breath and he slowly held his hand over the various painful-looking patches of red skin over the wolf's body. To Hyrule’s utter relief, he could see that the life spell actually worked well enough on animals, as the angry red blisters slowly disappeared and turning into a paler shade of red. It seemed that the healing process felt weird for the wolf, as he was shifting restlessly as the burn marks began to heal and disappear. 

"There," Hyrule panted lightly, wiping off the sweat from his forehead. "That should be enough for you to shift without much trouble and let the potions do the rest, Twilight."

With a cloud of black particles, Wolfie had turned back into the Hero of Twilight, who still looked rather awful with the faded burns on his right side of his neck in contrast to his pale skin, wearing a peculiar expression that seemed to be confusion crossed with a grimace.

"How Hyrule? How did you know?"

The brunette just shoved a potion into Twilight's hands.

"I’ll explain as I assess your burns okay? Here, drink the potion."

Not wanting to argue with the designated medic of the group, Twilight downed the potion in one gulp as Hyrule examined the burn on his neck. It was fading faster, but he could see that it was going to leave some faint scars even with potions. 

After he had Twilight take off his tunic so he could exam and treat his right side (which was the area with the most amount of patches of fur missing when he was in wolf form), he explained why he knew Twilight's secret.

"While you may all know that I have some spells up my sleeves, what you guys did not know was how sensitive I was to magic energy and magical signatures. I sensed shadowy magic on you Twilight, and while I was focusing on what the source of this magic energy, I realized that it was the exact same energy that I felt from Wolfie. It made much more sense because you are always not around when Wolfie was here, and vice versa. I just connected the dots. Besides," Hyrule deadpanned."It's kinda obvious once you look at your facial markings and Wolfie's facial markings."

Twilight gave a small chuckle before wincing again when Hyrule carefully wrapped the worst parts of his burns."Yeah, I guess it is, isn't it?"

Hyrule asked one of the questions that had been burning to ask.

"Twilight, are you...afraid of fire?"

He felt Twilight stiffen, but Hyrule plowed on. He knew he might be stepping on the borderline, but this was something he could not let it fester within Twilight. He needed someone he could talk to.

"...H-how…?"

Hyrule sighed. "When I had been observing you after I had been sensing the shadowy magic, I've noticed that while subtle, you had been flinching away from a fire that was not created by you. You always stood away from Legend and Wild whenever they used their fire weapons. You are always aggressive toward wizzrobes and shoot them down before they could unleash their magic. It was small things here and there, but it led me to the conclusion that you were afraid of fire.” Hyrule felt the minuscule flinch from the hero he was patching up. “Twilight, I know you might be uncomfortable talking about this, but I just want to help you. I don't want you to be fearing us every time we use any fire magic or fire-based weapons."

Twilight was extremely silent for a long while. Hyrule was getting slightly uncomfortable and fearful that he may have taken a step too far when he heard Twilight mutter something under his breath. 

"...you’re...somewhat right, Hyrule. It’s not really just fire...more like magical fire..."

Finishing dressing up the burn wounds, Hyrule slowly took a seat next to Twilight. "Do you want to tell me why you feel afraid of magical fire? I might be able to help you?" he spoke softly. Twilight was looking pale, slightly shaky, and his breathing was still somewhat erratic. Hyrule waited as patiently as he could, hoping that by just staying by Twilight's side, it would help him a little.

"It...it all started...when I was still very young..."

He took a deep breath before quietly starting.

"When I was born, my biological parents told me that they were very surprised at my left hand." Twilight showed the back of his left hand. The mark of the Triforce was there, clear as day. Hyrule was a bit confused as to why Twilight showed his left hand, but he stayed quiet as Twilight continued, while rubbing his left hand.

"My parents put makeup on my left hand without fail and told me to keep the mark a secret. I was still very young at the time, so at first, I did not know why, but I did keep my promise and did not reveal my mark to anyone. I just remember them saying 'we are protecting you from bad people' and that was it."

Hyrule understood this. With a small child holding a Triforce piece, it was bound to endanger said child from people with malicious intent, and as such was very important to keep it a secret. 

"I did keep my promise, I sw-swear I did, " Twilight's voice became shakier and quieter. "But somehow... my playmates found out I had the mark of the Triforce on my left hand."

Twilight's grip on his fur coat got tighter as he began to spun a tale that Hyrule was not expecting.

"I don't blame my playmates; it’s a natural reaction for children to get curious and ask their parents about it. No children would expect how fear can erase all sense of rationality from adults. There...there was a rumor, that if one of the two missing pieces of the Triforce appears on someone, a great calamity would occur in Hyrule. That rumor made the adults fearful. They did not want anything bad happening to the land of Hyrule. So when the adults found out from their children that I had the mark of the Triforce on the back of my hand...

th-they, tried to kill me..."

Dead silence echoed throughout the clearing when Twilight uttered that sentence. 

“K-kill?”

Twilight nodded at Hyrule’s implied question.

"It was at the dead of the night, both my parents and I were asleep when I felt my left hand burning hot for a second. I yelped loudly, which woke up my parents. Then we had noticed something was wrong. The air felt suffocating. Something smelt weird. It was the smell... of burning wood. My parents were screaming and pulling me, staying low to the ground to find an exit. We managed to get to the back entrance. We all ran out. Or tried to. Something felt weird when I passed through the doorway. I looked back. Both my parents were still stuck in the burning house, a barrier of energy stopping them."

As the story went on, Twilight’s voice steadily became more monotone, with short sentences. It was as if he was giving a report to his superior, not a tragic, horrifying backstory to a friend.

"I...I tried so hard to break the barrier. I prayed to the goddess to allow my parents to go through the wall. But... nothing worked. My parents were screaming at me to leave, to escape without them. I didn't want to. I remember screaming at my parents. That brought attention to the adults that had been the ones to put of the magical barrier and set fire to our house, and they began running toward me. I had no choice but to run.

I don't remember how long I ran. My feet began to hurt. Then something had tripped me, and I tumbled. They caught up to me. I really can’t recall much what happened, but I woke up with aching bruises all over my body, a split lip, blood between my fingernails...and tied to a pole with piles of wood beneath me."

By this time, Hyrule who was listening to Twilight's story was extremely pale and at a loss for words. He was too horrified. 

_ 'no...no, no, no they didn't, did they?' _

Twilights' voice was quivering at this point, and Hyrule could hear the fear while he spoke in a soft, haunting voice.

"Th-th-there was a wi-wizard in front of me, chanting something I couldn't understand. I felt strong magic, powerful, fiery, and tainted. Th-then everything started b-burning in front of me. It was scorching. Red. Orange. Yellow. Grey. It burned. Pain engulfed me. Then everything went white. 

Next thing I know, Rusl, the swordsman who took me in, found me lying in the spring in tattered, scorched clothes and not a single memory except my name, and an extreme aversion to fire of any kind."

Hyrule was completely speechless. While he had been expecting something traumatic to cause Twilight to be fearful of magical fires, but he had not been expecting this. The story that Twilight had given him was too horrifying. He couldn't believe what his fellow hero had gone through, and while he doesn't know how old he was then, he could tell it was when Twilight was still very young. He was trying to find words to say to Twilight when the wolf hero continued with a shuddering exhale.

"I stayed in Ordon Village for many years, not remembering much of my past except the fact I never wanted to go anywhere near inland Hyrule, hated my birthmark on my left hand, and being afraid of fire. Sometimes the villagers saw me trying to using a knife and skinning off the back of my left hand.”  
Twilight rubbed the back of his left hand as he admitted his pst self-harming.

“With the help of the villagers I managed to stop harming myself, overcome my fear of fire that I had made, because I could control how much it burned, and how big it could be, and was working on the fire other people made when the invasion of the evil created by Ganondorf and Zant happened. 

The village children were taken, and I had rushed out of the village in hopes to save them. The desire to save the children had made me forget my fear of going to inland Hyrule, but at the same time, it began to trigger my old memories bit by bit. Being trapped inside a bomb storage shack that was burning. Fyrus, the boss in Death mountain that was a monster covered in flames. The burning bridge with oil spilled all over. The multiple fire arrows that were shot at me and the wagon I was escorting. Argorok. All of them made me remember why I was so fearful of fire and magic: because the combination of the two had scarred me for life."

"Oh, Twilight..." Hyrule whispered when Twilight became completely silent. He thought the Hyrule in the alternate timeline would have less strife than his timeline, it seemed that it was certainly not the case. And from hearing Twilight’s story, monsters were not the only ones who did such appalling and horrifying things. 

He gave Twilight 's hand a soft squeeze. "I...I'm so sorry Twilight."

The elder hero shook his head. "Don't be sorry Hyrule," he whispered. "It's just stupid, even after all these years and going through my journey as a hero, I have this fear of fire that is magical in origin-"

Hyrule squeezed the elder hero's hand harder to stop Twilight of his rambling. "No Twilight, it's not stupid. Anyone would have such fears even years later if they ever experienced anything that traumatic in their early childhood. Twilight, I believe you would know this, but being courageous is not about having any fear at all. Standing up to the fear is courageous. Everyone has fears. Even I do Twilight." This was true. Ever since his second journey to awaken the slumbering princess of Hyrule from years ago, he had been ever fearful of his own blood getting spilled, even a tiny bit.

"And besides, it seems that you seem to have been working on overcoming your fear of magic, seeing that you use the magic crystal hanging on your neck to transform into a wolf!" He was curious about how he began to use this magic, but he would leave the questioning for another day.

Twilight let out a small chuckle as he lifted his head up. His eyes were glistening wet. "...I guess that is true." Twilight gave a small smile toward the brunette. "I never really told my story to anyone before...it did help a little to sort through my emotions. So...thank you Hyrule," he chocked out.

Hyrule merely shook his head once before silently spreading out his arms. Twilight took the invitation and slowly embraced the brunette.

_ 'We'll get through this Twi. We will take this one step at a time to help you with your fears,' _ he thought as he patted Twilight whose shoulders were trembling, letting out a few sobs.

**Author's Note:**

> I really don't know anyone who has Pyrophobia, so I cannot claim that any of my writing here is accurate. I do have a slight case of arachnophobia, so there is that.


End file.
